


chain me to your heart's desire

by the hyacinth girl (arguendo)



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 03:36:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11477796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arguendo/pseuds/the%20hyacinth%20girl
Summary: "May it please the Court—we stand before you today to address the tragedy of a high school student in good standing who fell victim to circumstances and coincidence. The record will show that Kurusu Akira has gathered some delinquent acts to his name. But our evidence proves, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he cannot andmustnot be held guilty for the murder of SIU liaison, Detective Akechi Goro."Or: the rise and downfall of Junior Detective Kurusu Akira.





	chain me to your heart's desire

**Author's Note:**

> rated in anticipation of future chapters. technically part of the same continuity as [get lost tracing my steps back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10827558), but by no means do you have to read that to understand this.

# *

_This is happening to you because I don’t want to be here._  
— Richard Siken, "Black Telephone".

_Flash_.

Shadow cuts tile. The courthouse's a brushfire of camera lenses. Flash: reflecting paneled walls, plaster and dusty lineoleum, cypress arches cupping panes struck white. Flash: the carved courtroom doors clenched like prayers, hope hanging in a silvery hush. Flash: a boy and his attorney in lockstep, eyes anchored on a faraway door. _Kurusu!_ You; your attorney; matched in your soft black stride. The storm crowds close behind you. Flash: a wrist grinding at your brow as you jerk from the powder-bright lighting. The scuff of new leather down a trial-hollowed hall. Hurrying, hurrying.

"Kurusu! Kurusu Akira!"

Flash, flash. They come baying up to your heels through the watery Shibuya afternoon: a faceless swarm masked in phones and notebooks, shrill as crows, camera after glass-eyed camera staring in hungry delight.

"Kurusu, leaked reports from the station are now suggesting that you've been charged as a Phantom Thief as well as a—"

"Now that he's been missing for four weeks, Kurusu Akira, do you have any statements to make on your innocence in this—"

Your steps burn up the maplegold stair. Ahead, three guards lift their chins, houndlike beneath their bronze-rimmed caps. One splits away to each groaning door as you close in; together they draw open the courtroom to a tidal wash of benches and padded black seats. People are drifting through the aisles, every eye downcast. The third guard beckons you forward, guiding two down as the closing doors cut away the queue. In your shadow, the media's shouts rise, crackling and surging through the crack.

"You're gonna owe your story to Tokyo one way or the other, Kurusu!"

"Haven't you kept up that silent act for long enough? You were taken out of your partner's apartment in handcuffs on the morning of his disappearance!" 

"Face your fate, Kurusu! If you tell the police where to find his body, maybe—"

Thunder. A guard's hand clanks the lock into its place.

Marching between the plush red rows, your attorney clenches her shoulders and shakes out her looseblown hair. "Vultures," she says, a latch-snap judgment.

"Thanks," you say. 

Her eyes tumble to you, brimming with surprise. One arm hefts three binders against her formal jacket; she pinches the scarf's frilled knot at a shoulder, thumbs the silk down to a pendant's heavy shell. Judgment made chic. You know the look, the doubt—it's startling when she touches your elbow instead. "No matter how bad it gets," your attorney says, "you have to know that I believe in you. I don't know what's brought you here—I don't know what you _think_ you've done. But before the trial, we'll get to the bottom of it. I swear it to you, Kurusu."

She's intent: a throaty sunstruck voice, sincere and unreal. You bow your head.

Together you wend your way down to the defendant's paneled bench, a hero-at-law and her criminal shadow. Your attorney's brisk hand pulls out your chair for you, palms the hem of her skirt as she takes her own. Out of her assembled library, she pulls three folders for final review and sweeps them over the table to brace over the display of pages jarred loose. A photo's slipped from a folder's corner—filmy brightness and pastels. Hour after hour, you've reviewed the collection, confirmed every exhibit. You know the folder as well as she does. But a jailed eye starves for color. The snapshot crackles with unseasonal life: his jacket hooked over one shoulder, sleeves still swinging with the momentum of his turn. Hair breeze-tufted and gleaming. Haloed like summer as he smiles back to the camera, a full-fledged secret.

 _On top of everything else,_ his laughter all rue and gold, _are you taking up photography too, Akira? I'm not sure how you expect me to compete for your time if you won't—_

" _Rise!_ "

The guard barks fit to splinter. Beneath the judge's shelved seat, each assembled officer snaps a tassel-shaking salute. On cue, the courtroom surges to its feet: your side, the government's, the silhouettes teeming along the backrows in suits and sweatshirts alike.

Introductions march by in processions: rank and file, courteous rituals that the judge's impatient eye tramples as it veers away to the next stage. Across the aisle, Niijima Sae's jaw tics as she sits; her hands bridge tight over the counter. Your stare glances off her steel.

This time, you remember: a bite pinches your lips together.

Into a new silence, your attorney rises. A palm splays over the broad gleam of her pendant one last time—and her gaze sweeps the courtroom in a clear tide. "Thank you," she says, "Chief Justice. And may it please the Court—we stand before you today to reframe the tragedy of a high school student in good standing who fell victim to circumstances and coincidence. The record will show that Kurusu Akira has gathered some delinquent acts to his name. But our evidence proves, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he cannot and _must_ not be held guilty for the murder of SIU liaison, Detective Akechi Goro—"

# *

" _Akira._ "

Like a bell striking.

She's threaded her fingers between the bars. Her black brows pinch as an eye sweeps your cell: unpainted and glance-wide, cement worn from kneeling decades, lit by buzzing hall lamps and one slit-mouthed window. Your tatami mat's been furled against the wall; the afternoon drizzles grey across the scrubbed flooring. Day and night, this space is yours to rule. You can slouch beneath the dregs of the city lights, measure the length knee by knee, crack your knuckles to break the quiet. A new fate, planted between your hands. Something safe, at last, to hold onto.

"We don't have time," your friend says, mercury-cool, speaking like an actress to a script. Over months you've learned the rise and fall of her, how she can drive accusations in one by one, neat as pins. "I've put in a request with the warden to see you—but apparently someone in the system has given you special standing. They won't allow you access to the visiting room." Her lip curls. "To be honest, I'd expected worse before I came. Our prisons have a poor reputation even among their advocates. I'm glad they're showing some common sense for me."

Niijima Makoto, who walks in a stiletto-sharp stride and clings to her steel. A girl born for a blindfold and chained scales. Her reassurance juts out of place like ivory out of sand.

You close your eyes.

"My sister won't speak to me about your case," she tells you, still. Her knuckles shiver and rasp metal. "Neither will the lawyer that they assigned to you—but it doesn't matter. We don't need to take advantage of the system. We'll do anything it takes to free you. I won't lie," she says, brittle and too soon. "Not even to you. The investigators still haven't found his body. The lack of one—complicates matters. But I've seen my sister at work. Even where we can't prove a negative for you, we may be able to prove a positive in others. We, all of us, know that you had nothing to do with Akechi's disappearance. Therefore, someone else will have the corresponding motive." 

You don't answer; there's no need. No one ever talks about _lies_ unless they're telling a story you know better than to believe.

A tap sounds along the bars, and another—too slow to make morse code, too thin to be rain. "We have certain advantages," she says, but it's an afterthought, to punctuate the quiet. "All we need is a single discrepancy at the scene. Once we've found a direction, we can expose the truth."

They must have shown her the photographs by now: the crime scene stripped down to counters and bone, dust and evidence. The smeared plaster where a body'd been driven back, caged and crushed until his scrabbling elbows bruised the white. How his lungs must've burned beneath it, rusted away the light of his eyes. How the red had flecked, littered the dust, dripped against the grain. Iron on your tongue, boiling down to the root of your jaw. Every corner still hollow with his echo. _Don't_ , choking thick, pleading. _Stop_ -

"I'm _sorry_ ," Makoto says, and a pang flares beneath your ribs. "I should have said that first. I realise that you trusted him. I can't imagine how this must be affecting you. I'm not asking that you share—everything about him. But we need you to have some faith in us. If we're to make progress, you need to tell us where to start looking."

 _Trust me_ , in his careful, belling voice. You remember—but he'd yielded in the end, hadn't he? Lashes slung dark, heels shuddering, wild stuttering against the open flex of your palm as his hair swayed and curtained and his teeth gritted red, red. Bare fingers coiled around your wrist like a soldier's on a sword, not to pull apart the blow but to drive it deeper. Confessions clotting on his tongue as he'd faced you, waited, smiled.

" _Say_ something. Akira—please."

 _I'm going to miss you,_ you'd said, with your hands blackening his throat.

You're at the bars—your impact rings, the shock of flesh catching steel fit to bruise. The grey lights reel. Space spins wide between you: three steps back along the tiled hall, Makoto stares with the stark eyes of a masked thing. Stress-starched, mouth drawn white. Waiting for the first blow. 

There's a sound digging at the backs of your teeth, something a little less than a voice: heaving and acid-scoured and fearful at once, an animal's snarling laugh. 

"And what if I did?" you say. "What if I killed him?"

# *

**Author's Note:**

> current estimates suggest that the finished work will total something like 26,000 words if we're all very, very unlucky. see you for the fic proper in october.


End file.
